Australian Private Schools With the Richest Parents, Ranked

New research has ranked Australian schools by the income of student’s parents. Of the assessed schools, all are private education establishments — a sector of the industry that is controversially overfunded by the Australian government.

After the 2012 Gonski Review, state and federal governments agreed school funding needed to be based on need per student. But more than a decade later, all Australian private schools are overfunded, while all Australian public schools are still considered underfunded when measured by the Schooling Resource Standard — an estimate of how much public funding a school requires to meet its students’ educational needs. 

According to the SRS, all public schools were funded 92.2 per cent in 2023, but private schools were funded 105.17 per cent. In dollars, this means in 2024 public schools will be underfunded by about $6.8 billion, while private schools will be overfunded by about $1 billion, according to advocacy group Save Our Schools.

When ranked by parent incomes, the top 10 per cent are receiving a quarter of ongoing overfunding – most of that overfunding will be in the six figures per year.

The data, published during Senate estimates and analysed by the Age and Save Our Schools, showed 105 private schools with a median family income of $209,000 or more a year will be overfunded by $692 million between 2022 and 2028.

Fifty-two schools in Australia have a median family income of over $260,000 per year and they will be overfunded by $316.7 million in that period.

And this is all based on the family’s reported annual income. It doesn’t take into account assets or tax deductions.

The school with the highest median parent income is St Augustine's College, an all-boys school in Sydney’s Northern Beaches. In the years from 2022 to 2028, it will receive more than $25 million in combined government funding, more than $22 million of which is actually overfunding above the SRS.

The next three schools with the highest family incomes of more than $260,000 a year are also in Sydney: Northern Beaches Christian School, MLC School and Newington College, followed by Brisbane Grammar, Newcastle Grammar, Loreto Kirribilli in Sydney, St Margaret's Anglican Girls School in Queensland, Hale School in WA and Radford College in ACT. All will received more than $10 million in government overfunding between 2022 and 2028.

Australia’s most overfunded school is Penleigh & Essendon Grammar in Melbourne’s north-west. It will receive $24,064,524 in taxpayer dollars over six years and the median income of its parents is more than $200,000 a year. Enrolment fees for year 12 students at the school is more than $20,000.

Trevor Cobbold, National Convenor of Save Our Schools who led the analysis, said in a statement the data revealed “a scandalous squandering of $1.3 to 1.4 billion in Commonwealth Government over-funding private schools that enrol children of the richest families in Australia”.

“The fact is that the current funding model for private schools is designed to overfund the [and] the current school funding system is destroying public education,” he said.

“In contrast to the extensive overfunding of private schools serving the richest families in Australia, public schools are massively underfunded and there is no plan as to when they will be fully funded. This is despite the fact that public schools enrol over 80 per cent of disadvantaged students.”

He also said Australia’s public education system was being “progressively dismantled” while the privatisation of education increased.

“Inequality in school outcomes and social segregation between schools is deepening. Apart from the disastrous effect on the lives of disadvantaged students, it has serious implications for the nature of our society and Australia’s future economic prosperity.”

Aleksandra Bliszczyk is the Deputy Editor of VICE Australia. Follow her on Instagram.

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